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The Puerco River is sometimes called Rio Puerco of the West, to distinguish it from the Rio Puerco of the East that rises in the same vicinity but flows east to the Rio Grande.[4]

Although the word Puerco means pig, it also used to mean dirty or filthy in Spanish, this usage in the southwest United States is better translated as Dirty River or Muddy River due its high content of silt and mud.[5]

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) operates a Puerco River stream gauge 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of Chambers in Arizona. The maximum discharge recorded by this gauge between 1971 and 2009 was 17,800 cubic feet per second (500 m3/s) on Sept. 30, 1971, and the minimum discharge was often zero, from a drainage basin of 2,156 square miles (5,580 km2).[7]

The Church Rock uranium mill spill is one of the worst radioactive spills in U.S. history. On July 16, 1979, a tailings pond at the Church Rock uranium mill, owned by United Nuclear Corporation, breached its dam and 93 million gallons (350,000 m3) of radioactive, acidic uranium tailings solution flowed into the North Fork of the Puerco River.[10] Approximately 1,100 short tons (1,000 t) of uranium mine waste contaminated 250 acres (100 ha) of land and up to 50 miles (80 km) of the Puerco River.[11][12]